Day trip to Glasgow

At the urging of our friends James and Arbory, we took a 45-minute train ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow to visit. The weather was nice – chilly, but mostly sunny and not at all rainy. The train ride was nice, across the green Scottish countryside.

We came out of Queens Street station, got ourselves oriented, then walked several blocks to the Glasgow Cathedral. This was a very interesting space, and had quite a few lovely stained glass windows. We poked around here for a while and Dave took lots of pictures.

After a short while I realized that it was really lunchtime, so we walked back toward the center of the city to the Willow Tea Room, which had been designed by renowned Scottish architect Charles Rennie Macintosh. The decor was really interesting and fun, and the meal was delicious. We of course also had tea, which was lovely.

Then we went to a museum called The Lighthouse. It features contemporary art, and also is built around a much older building designed by Macintosh. That being the case, there is one entire gallery devoted to his work, and his life and times. We also hiked up the tower that he had designed, up a spiral staircase. It was quite a hike but it was worth it, because the top of the tower had an outside balcony that went almost all the way around, affording great views of the city and the outlying areas.

We spent quite a bit of time there, and after we left we walked down to the River Clyde for a bit. It wasn’t too scenic, but it had quite a few interesting bridges crossing it. We walked along it for a few blocks, then headed back up to find a subway station. We took the subway (which isn’t much of a system – it’s just a loop – but it works) up a few stops and then went to find the Glasgow School of Art, the original building of which was designed by – yes – Charles Rennie Macintosh. It was approaching 5 pm by now, though, so we didn’t take the tour.

We walked around a bit until we got to the next subway stop, then got back on and went up to Glasgow University. It was a beautiful campus at the top of a hill, with amazing views. There wasn’t much to do there either, so after we’d walked around for a while, we started heading in the direction of finding dinner. We ended up at a pub called Stravaigin, where we celebrated St. Patrick’s day by Dave having Guinness and I had Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. I had haggis for dinner, which was YUMMY – I completely recommend it.

It was getting late, so we took the subway back to Queens Street Station and got there just in time for the 8 pm train. It was a smooth trip back and we hiked downhill (amazingly!) back to Michelle and Paul’s house, and spent the rest of St. Patrick’s Day just hanging out, having a quiet evening with our friends.